Trans. Satanist. Anarchist.
Those three words are how Aria DiMezzo, the Republican nominee for sheriff in Cheshire County described herself.
DiMezzo has become somewhat of a celebrity, being featured on news outlets such as Fox News, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. “It’s such a shocking story and it’s been amazing on all fronts. Republicans generally don’t like trans people, they don’t like satanists and they don’t like anarchists,” said DiMezzo. “A Russian news agency actually came out and interviewed me. It’s all in Russian, they have almost a million subscribers on YouTube with over 150 million viewers inside of Russia, so I have no idea what they’re saying about me, but I doubt it’s positive.”
DiMezzo, unsuccessfully, ran for sheriff under the Liberatarian ticket in 2018, “That was before they lost major party ballot access, which meant that if I wanted to run again, I would have to go out and collect signatures and that’s not going to happen. So I switched my party affiliation to the Republicans and ran for sheriff under their banner, and they [Republican voters] voted for me,” said DiMezzo.
Despite running under the Republican ticket, DiMezzo’s views can be interpreted as leaning left. According to DiMezzo’s website, “When I say ‘f- the police,’ I mean exactly that. F- what the police are. But I applaud what police are supposed to be.”
DiMezzo was inspired to run because of the recent surge in police brutality. “There’s a long list of reasons starting with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, there’s so many names it’s impossible to remember them all…Kelly Thomas…the kid who was beaten to death with flashlights and stuff. It’s unbelievable. We can’t expect city councils to actually be on the police or do
anything about it.”
“The only department that can actually do something about police departments being out of control is the sheriff’s department because they’re historically the highest law enforcement officials in the county. So, if the city councils aren’t going to do it, the sheriffs need to step in and start policing the police.”
DiMezzo’s platform runs on just that: policing the police.
According to DiMezzo, “The vast majority of things the police do is pulling people over for broken tail lights, broken headlights and things like that, that they should advise the citizen on, like, ‘Hey, your tail light is out you should probably get that fixed.’”
“Instead it’s a revenue extortions scheme. That’s all it is. I mean that they are pirates that are working on behalf of the state to extract money from us because they don’t want to increase our taxes further. So they can turn all of these victimless crimes into things they can fine us for.”
DiMezzo explained what policing the police would look like, saying “Deputies need to be out there pulling over the police doing these sorts of things. When you see a police officer pulling someone over and giving them a sobriety test because they forgot to turn on the headlights out here in Keene, where it’s brightly lit anyway, pull over that police officer and ask him why he’s harassing this peaceful citizen.”
DiMezzo is running against Democrat incumbent Eli Rivera. “I’m to the left of my opponent,” said DiMezzo, regarding her opponent. “He’s center right at best. He’s not doing anything about the police, and that’s not to say the police in Keene are bad, they’re pretty benign as far as police are concerned.”
Regarding Rivera’s campaign, Rivera said, “I have always ran a positive campaign and will continue to do so regardless of who my opponent is.” However, Rivera declined to comment regarding DiMezzo’s campaign directly.
Although being more to the left than her opponent, Rivera, the Cheshire County Democrats declined to comment on her campaign, and said “We trust and believe in Eli Rivera and give him 100% support.”
Even though DiMezzo is running under the Republican party, DiMezzo has been met with mixed reviews.
“When I say ‘f- the police,’ I mean exactly that. F- what the police are. But I applaud what police are supposed to be.”
Aria Demezzo
“A lot of Republicans agree with my positions: my pro-Second Amendment, pro gun positions, my low tax positions, my small government [positions], [keeping] the federal government out of New Hampshire positions. But Marilyn Hudson, the chair of the Cheshire County Republican Committee says that I’m against the Republican platform.”
The Cheshire County Republican Committee declined to comment on DiMezzo’s campaign.
DiMezzo explained how she would like to engage Keene State College voters, “I would like to, but I’m not sure what the best avenue for that is, especially during the pandemic.”
Despite DiMezzo’s want for engaging the Keene State community, members of the Keene State College Republicans and Keene State College Democrats clubs did not respond to multiple requests to comment.
Outside of politics, DiMezzo has a talk radio show entitled “Free Talk Live” and is broadcast to 200 radio stations across the country. DiMezzo also owns a music studio, and is a High Priestess of the Reformed Satanic Church. To learn more about DiMezzo, visit her campaign website, https://aria4sheriff.com/.
The Equinox will run a story regarding democratic sheriff Eli Rivera’s campaign next week.
Tom Benoit can be contacted at:
tbenoit@kscequinox.com
